Fearless Nikki Finke keeps Hollywood honest.

(From CBS Marketwatch (Stories))

LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) -- Nobody covers Hollywood quite like Nikki Finke.

Finke is a rarity at a time when many entertainment writers are either too awed, ill-informed or lazy to do serious reporting on Tinseltown. In fact, no writer relishes taking the rich and famous down a peg as much as this LA Weekly print columnist/Web journalist.

While journalists pride themselves on having a natural skepticism for figures of authority, Finke's prickly distrust for many of them practically borders on disrespect, if not outright disdain. For example, this is the unfettered Finke on:

-- Actor and director Warren Beatty (June 2, 2005): "That's why I wince every time Beatty pontificates from the sidelines of American politics, no matter if it's preening from the commencement podium of UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy, as he did May 21, or stammering on the telephone to the oh-so-gullible Los Angeles Times four days later." (Actually, her dis of the Times, one of her many former employers, should qualify as a two-cushion shot).

-- "The Apprentice" (April 1, 2004): "As for the show itself, there's no attempt to portray any joy in work for work's sake or even accomplishment's sake. Just the opposite. (Donald) Trump's wannabes labor to win the next perk -- a gander at Trump's apartment, a ride on Trump's helicopter, a stay in Trump's hotel suite..."

-- The Sundance Film Festival (Jan. 30, 2003): "If you accept the premise that the film business is the folly of the filthy rich, then the independent-film business must seem the folly of the stupidly rich."